'Some of us will die but I pray it won't be a lot': Hurricane Matthew nears Haiti, Jamaica

Heavy rains from the outer bands of Hurricane Matthew drenched Jamaica and Haiti on Monday, flooding streets and sending many people to emergency shelters as the Category 4 storm approached the two countries.

Matthew had sustained winds of 220 km/h as it moved north, up from 210 km/h earlier in the day. The centre was expected to pass just east of Jamaica and near or over the southwestern tip of Haiti early Tuesday before heading to eastern Cuba, the U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami said.

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"People who are impacted by things like flooding and mudslides hopefully would get out and relocate because that's where we have seen loss of life in the past," said Richard Pasch, a senior hurricane specialist with the centre.

In Jamaica, many took that advice before the island's government discontinued a hurricane warning and replaced it with a tropical storm warning as Matthew tracked closer to Haiti. More than 700 people packed shelters in the eastern parish of St. Thomas and the Salvation Army said there were about 200 people at its shelters in Kingston as it put out a call for mattresses and cots.

Many people chose to stick it out at home. Local government minister Desmond McKenzie said all but four residents of the Port Royal area near the Kingston airport refused to board buses and evacuate.

• See the full list of warnings and watches from the U.S. hurricane centre as of 8 p.m. ET

In Haiti, authorities experienced a similar problem in some flood-prone areas. In the Port-au-Prince suburb of Tabarre, officials urged shantytown residents living next to a muddy river to take shelter at a local school where cots were set up. But many refused, fearing their few possessions might be stolen.

"If we lose our things we are not going to get them back!" Toussaint Laine said as police and officials from the mayor's office urged the jobless man and his family to evacuate.

Forecasters said as much as 100 centimetres of rain could fall on some isolated areas of Haiti, raising fears of deadly mudslides and floods in the heavily deforested country where many families live in flimsy houses with corrugated metal roofs.

"Some of us will die but I pray it won't be a lot," said Serge Barionette in the southern town of Gressier, where a river recurrently bursts its banks during serious storms.

As of 8 p.m. ET, the storm was centred about 325 kilometres southwest of Port-au-Prince. It was moving north at 13 km/h.

"We are worried about the slow pace of Hurricane Matthew, which will expose Haiti to much more rain, and the country is particularly vulnerable to flooding," said Ronald Semelfort, director of Haiti's national meteorology centre.

Haiti's civil protection agency reported the death of a fisherman in rough water churned up by the storm. Agency chief Marie Alta Jean-Baptiste had said early Monday that the body of another fisherman was recovered off the southern town of Aquin but she later said he was still missing.

The reported death in Haiti brought the total for the storm to at least three. One man died Friday in Colombia and a 16-year-old was killed in St. Vincent and the Grenadines on Sept. 28 when the system passed through the eastern Caribbean. 

Teams of civil protection officials walked the streets of Les Cayes and other areas urging residents to secure their homes, prepare emergency kits and warn their neighbours. Many Haitians appeared unaware of the looming hurricane.

"No, I haven't heard anything about a bad storm coming here," farmer Jean-Bernard Mede said with a concerned expression as he took a break from walking three cows along a dirt track outside the flood-prone town of Leogane. "I'll do what I can for my animals and my family."

Officials with Haiti's civil protection agency said there were roughly 1,300 emergency shelters across the country, enough to hold up to 340,000 people. 

Strongest since Felix

Matthew is one of the most powerful Atlantic hurricanes in recent history and briefly reached the top classification, Category 5, becoming the strongest hurricane in the region since Felix in 2007. 

Cuba's government declared a hurricane alert for six eastern provinces and removed traffic lights from poles in the city of Santiago to keep them from falling due to heavy wind. 

Matthew's centre was expected to make landfall in Cuba about 80 kilometres east of the U.S. Navy base at Guantanamo Bay, where authorities evacuated about 700 spouses and children of service members on military transport planes to Florida.

Navy Capt. David Culpepper, the base commander, said emergency shelters had been set up and authorities were bracing for storm surge and heavy rain that could threaten some low-lying areas, including around the power plant and water desalination facility.

"We have no choice but to prepare ourselves to take a frontal assault if you will," Culpepper said.

The storm could continue north to parts of Canada, according to forecasters. 

"This time next week, Halifax may be bracing for the arrival of Matthew," in time for the Thanksgiving Day weekend, Chris St. Clair of the Weather Network said over the weekend. 

"In the week ahead, it could track due north toward Atlantic Canada," he said.